I was lunching with a longtime friend of exceptionally high integrity today when our conversation turned to politics. Imagine that!
She hastened to warn me about a frightening new federal tax law crafted to put all of us ordinary folk in the poorhouse. I asked what the source of her information was, and she replied "I saw it on the internet." I suggested that the internet was not a "source" in itself, and asked about the author or site where she'd seen it. She thought that I should "Go check it out." Which, of course, I hastened to do.
So ... If you've been reading or hearing about a 1% "transaction tax" put forth by Nancy Pelosi and/or President Obama's "financial team", just put your mind at rest. They did no such thing and it isn't going to happen.
What did happen is that a Representative from Pennsylvania by t he name of Chaka Fattah has been pushing for a transaction fee system to replace the federal income tax and reduce the national debt since 2004. In 2010 he submitted the Debt Free America Act (H.R. 4646) which has attracted zero sponsors and had "about as much chance of passing as a snowball" in you-know-where.*
Also, if you've seen a video or quotes of N. Pelosi supposedly recommending it, that is a deliberately misleading piece of propaganda. She was actually speaking about an entirely different bill, H.R. 4191 introduced by Rep. Peter DeFazio of Oregon in 2009 called the "Let Wall Street Pay for the Restoration of Main Street" which, incidentally, went nowhere. It might not have been such a bad idea, as it was supposed to fund creation of more middle-class jobs by applying a small %age value tax on the buying and selling of stocks and other securities.
Just another example of conflation and misrepresentation by right-wing propagandists bent on scaring the daylights out of us and trying to make our President look bad.
** http://www.snopes.com/politics/taxes/debtfree.asp
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